Tag Archives: others

Bearness is a topic I have exhausted time and time again and for good reason: I still do not fully understand it. I do not know how or why understanding bearness could matter. I do not know what to do with an understanding of bearness. I do not even know if I am correctly understanding bearness, whether it be bearness in general or my own, specific, bearness. I could probably explore the topic of bearness forever and ever until I am not a bear anymore (though I hope that never happens because I like being a bear).

But for all the energy and time I put towards being a bear, I have done little thinking about the -ness of others. I have, of course, explored the surface level of others’ -ness. Trees, for example, have a treeness, I am sure, and I have spent time pondering what that might be like. I have wondered if trees count their branches and their leaves and their acorns as part of their treeness or if each part of a tree gets its own -ness (leafness, acornness, branchness, etc.). I have also definitely wondered what trees think of themselves and their place in the forest and whether or not they think about how I might think about those things.

However, when it comes to long-term, truly thoughtful reflection on treeness, I have never really wrestled with it. The same goes for pretty much any -ness: squirrelness, dirtness, dumpsterness, skyness, sunness. Everythingness. I have not invested the kind of dedication I have invested in my own -ness to any of these things.

Part of that is because none of these things will discuss their own -ness with me. Even when I ask, I am almost always met with silence and, in one very unfortunate incident, loud crashing sounds (I knocked over the dumpster (sorry)).

But that is no excuse, I suppose. Just because something will not discuss its -ness with me does not mean I should remain oblivious to that thing’s -ness. There must be better ways to understand the -ness others. And in doing so, perhaps I can even learn a little more about my own -ness. Maybe part of bearness is trying to understand everyone-else-ness. Or at least trying to do so.

The forest can get cold. Sporadically cold. The coldness of the forest can be unpredictable and angry. Avoiding the cold is important. Being cold is almost as bad as being hungry, and it is not nearly as simple to avoid as hunger. Hungry? Put a thing that is food in your belly. Cold? The solutions are much more complex.

Often, I hope being in my cave is an easy way to avoid being cold, but that is simply not the case. The cold, rough surface of my cave floor is unwelcoming and vicious toward my defenseless belly (even with its lovely, fuzzy fur). My cave sends me out into the forest, seeking better places for warmth.

Human caves seem, as I have discussed numerous times, welcoming and warm but are absolutely not welcoming. They are warm, though. The few times I have managed to enter a human cave have been incredibly warm. That warmth is always cutoff by shouting, though, so it is, in a terrible kind of way, worse to experience it since it is so quickly snatched away.

Human caves sometimes have metal things behind them that have bursting little suns in them. I have no idea why humans simply keep these little suns in metal things near their caves, but they are incredibly warm and incredibly dangerous. I have ruined the fuzziness of my fur by accident on these little sun things many times. How can something be so warm but also so angry? That is just how the sun works, in my experience. It will bake fur to a comfy temperature right before leaving red marks on the skin beneath.

Warmth can be hard to come by. I almost always end up back in my cave, having exhausted the potential warmth outside of it. Recently I got to my cave and found three raccoons, a very small opossum, and maybe a squirrel (it was hard to see so it could have been a bundle of tails, who knows) huddled in the corner, their trembling little bodies pressed up against sharp rock of the cave wall. They did not move as I got closer. I slumped beside them and aimed my belly toward them. I scooted closer. One raccoon bit me, but I was not offended. I settled into the corner with them, and their little warm bodies made my belly fur feel comfortable and at ease. I hope they felt the same way, but I had no way of knowing. When I woke, they were gone. We kept one another warm for awhile and then went on about our ways and days. I hope they come back when it gets cold again.